Two days ago myself and my squad arrived in Romania after 4 long days of travel…. and honestly they were some of the hardest and most tiring days of my life. It started on Monday, September 11th when we hoped on a bus at 5 AM to head towards NYC. because of hurricane Irma, we had to fly out of there with a layover in Portugal in order to arrive in Draganesti, Romania safely. The layover in Lisbon was a HUGE blessing to all of us, and greatly raised our spirits in the light of having roughly 5 hours of sleep in course three days.
I think the hardest part for me was remaining positive throughout all of the chaos. Now, I have traveled in foreign countries before, but it was a bit more laid back and less crazy than this. It came to a point where we were standing in a crowded bus with 50+ pounds on our back for an hour where I laid my head against the bus window and cried out to God, “please. help me get through this.” I thought to myself, how in the world am I going to do this for 9 months? I was sweating, my feet where killing me, and I felt like I had no strength left in my body. It was in that moment when I remembered that it doesnt matter just how exausted I am. God has called me here for a purpose, and even though I had none of my own strength left, God gave me His strength, and He gives all of us strength to get through the hard stuff everyday. We can do anything through the power of Christ.
Psalm 118:13-14 -I was pushed back and about to fall, but the LORD helped me. The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.
Romans 8:18 was a huge encouragement to me this last week of travel which states, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” After one day of ministry, I have already seen this being revealed to our squad. Even though we had to go through 5 really long days of travel, yesterday we had our first day of ministry, spreading the gospel to a few sourrounding villages and passing out Romanian bibles and eye glasses. Seeing the love of Jesus reflected in the eyes of the people here is beautiful, and I am so excited for our different ministries the rest of this month which will include childrens ministry, street evangelism, sports ministry and teaching english.
